to build (literally and figuratively) · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
house
בֵּית֑וֹbei.To
H1004
a house (in the greatest variation of applications · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
moth
כָעָ֣שׁkha.'Ash
H6211
a moth · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
booth
וּ֝כְסֻכָּ֗הu.khe.su.Kah
H5521
a hut or lair · conjunction + preposition + noun, common feminine singular absolute
keeper
נֹצֵֽרno.Tzer
H5341
to guard · verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
maketh
עָשָׂ֥ה'a.Sah
H6213
to do or make · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Job 8:14-15 Whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider’s web.
Isaiah 1:8 And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.
Isaiah 51:8 For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvati…
Isaiah 38:12 Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd’s tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with pining sick…
Lamentations 2:6 And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden: he hath destroyed his places of the assembly: the LORD hath caus…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 27:11–end
Job's friends had seen a great deal of the misery and destruction that attend wicked people, especially oppressors; and Job, while the heat of disputation lasted, had said as much, and with as much assurance, of their prosperity; but now that the heat of the battle was nearly over he was willing to own how far he agreed with them, and where the difference between his opinion and theirs lay. 1. He agreed with them that wicked people are miserable people, that God will surely reckon with cruel oppressors, and one time or other, one way or other, his justice will make reprisals upon them for all the affronts they have put upon God and all the wrongs they have done to their neighbours. This trut…
(Job 8:14; Job 4:19). The transition is natural from "raiment" (Job 27:16) to the "house" of the "moth" in it, and of it, when in its larva state. The moth worm's house is broken whenever the "raiment" is shaken out, so frail is it.
booth--a bough-formed hut which the guard of a vineyard raises for temporary shelter (Isa 1:8).
John Gill on Job 27:18
He buildeth his house as a moth,.... Which builds its house in a garment by eating into it, and so destroying it, and in time eats itself out of house and home, and however does not continue long in it, but is soon and easily shook out, or brushed off; so a wicked man builds himself an house, a stately palace, like Arcturus (l); so some render the words from Job 9:9, a palace among the stars, an heavenly palace and paradise, and expects it will continue for ever; but as he builds it with the mammon of unrighteousness, and to the prejudice and injury of others, and with their money, or what was due to them, so by his sins and iniquities he brings ruin and destruction upon himself and his fami…
13 This is the lot of the wicked man with God,
And the heritage of the violent which they receive from the Almighty:
14 If his children multiply, it is for the sword,
And his offspring have not bread enough.
15 His survivors shall be buried by the pestilence,
And his widows shall not weep.
16 If he heapeth silver together as dust,
And prepareth garments for himself as mire:
17 He prepareth it, and the righteous clothe themselves,
And the innocent divide the silver among themselves.
18 He hath built as a moth his house,
And as a hut that a watchman setteth up.
We have already had the combination אדם רשׁע for אישׁ רשׁע in Job 20:29; it is a favourite expression in Proverbs, and reminds one of…
The Church Fathers
"Their house will be like that of the worm, or the spider that has kept. It is their heart or their conscience; or he calls. their house the entrenchments behind which they shelter; they are cleverly elevated and full of detours, but exceedingly fragile, like the envelope in which the silkworm hides, in the hole where the spider is shut up, after having closed it on all sides. "Who knew how to preserve; "; to preserve herself in this retreat, for all the spiders do not do it. Allusion is made here to the sudden and profound corruption of guilty thoughts, and to the useless works which the impious person is pleased to preserve in his house.
He buildeth his house as a moth. And as the keeper he maketh a booth. 'The moth builds a house' for itself by corrupting. Nor could the heretic have been shewn by a better comparison, who makes a dwelling for his misbelief no where else save in the minds which he has corrupted, who also engages for his followers to be free from everlasting fire. For he pledges to them the refreshment of eternal rest, but his words have no solidity, because they lack the fulness of truth. Whence it is added, And as the keeper he maketh a booth. For 'the booth of the keeper' is not set firm by any foundation, but the time passing it is directly destroyed. And the rest promised by heretics is destroyed together with the time, in that after this life it is not found at all. And because oftentimes Heretics in contempt of the Church Universal are supported by the patronage of the powerful ones of the world, and the rich do not cease to aid them with all the countenance of active agency that they are empowered with, that identical person also, whoever he be, that is made to swell against the face of his Maker by temporal good things, is now touched by the sentence of the holy man.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Cottage — (1.) A booth in a vineyard (Isa. 1:8); a temporary shed covered with leaves or straw to shelter the watchman that kept the garden. These were slight fabrics, and were removed when no longer needed,…
Garden — Gardens in the East, as the Hebrew word indicates, are enclosures on the outskirts of towns, planted with various trees and shrubs. From the allusions in the Bible we learn that they were surrounded…
House — Till their sojourn in Egypt the Hebrews dwelt in tents. They then for the first time inhabited cities (Gen. 47:3; Ex. 12:7; Heb. 11:9). From the earliest times the Assyrians and the Canaanites were…
Booth · Watchmen — Watchmen
Hypocrisy · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Insects · Mentioned in scripture: Moth — Mentioned in scripture: Moth
Moth · An insect — An insect
Moth, The · Illustrative: (Making its house in garments,) of man’s folly in providing earthly things — Illustrative: (Making its house in garments,) of man’s folly in providing earthly things
Rich, The · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Some interpreters see a new speech here and ascribe it to Zophar because otherwise Zophar has no speech in this cycle.
Rashi on Job 27:18
He builds...as a moth As a moth, who builds his hole which does not endure, and like a booth that the watchman of the fig tree and the vineyard makes, which is not permanent. (Another explanation: that the watchman of the vineyard, who does not watch it at all times, made. I heard this. Absent in certain editions.)
